01.29.07
Adoption by gay couples wanes as issue in U.S.
So far Roman Catholic organizations in only two cities—Boston and San Francisco—have said they have opted out of arranging all adoptions in response to laws designed to guarantee gay couples’ adoption rights. And on the political front what appeared to be a drive two years ago to encourage states to pass laws stopping adoptions by gays seems to have petered out, with only a handful of states taking that route.
In the United Kingdom, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, leader of the world’s 77 million Anglicans, and the nation’s leading Catholic cardinal are pressing Prime Minister Tony Blair to exempt Catholic adoption agencies from new antidiscrimination laws. The religious leaders contend the laws would force Catholic adoption agencies to place children with gay couples.
Carrie Evans, state legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy organization based in Washington, said there has been very little movement toward banning adoptions by same-sex couples state-by-state, though a number of measures were considered in the last few years. Currently laws restricting such adoptions exist in four states—with Florida specifically banning adoptions by “homosexual couples” and three others saying unmarried couples may not adopt.
Evans said the push for such statutes seems to have faltered because polls indicate many in the United States feel “such decisions need to be made by judges and child welfare experts” and not by lawmakers.